Life After Extinction
by Jayden Scott
Summary: Alice had to seek redemption, had to find a way to put things right before she could join her lover in Alaska. Follows the events of RE: Afterlife, under the assumption the two women were lovers during Extinction. Alice/Claire femmeslash


**I have purposely NOT read any Alice/Claire fics concerning RE: Afterlife because I knew I was going to write this one day and did not want to be influenced. That being said, what follows is my own interpretation of Resident Evil: Afterlife, and the angsty love-fest that is Alice and Claire.**

**More to follow, this is just the prologue. And I demand reviews, encouragement, and literary cheerleading, dammit.**

**This is for Race, because she shares my lady-hardon for Alice and Claire, and I couldn't ask for a better friend.**

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><p><em><strong>Memory…<strong>_

"_Please wait," Alice's breath caught in her chest and she had to force herself to expel it. "thank you." She raised her ice blue eyes to catch Wesker's, wanted him to see her one last time._

"_For killing you?" His self-satisfied smirk was infuriating. There was only one thing that Albert Wesker believed in more than his own twisted vision of biological experimentation and superiority, and that was himself._

_Alice returned his smirk with one of her own only it was more wry than smug. If this was the end of her, than it would be on her own terms. "For making me human again." To die as a human, a person again, rather than the perverted monstrosity created by Umbrella. _

_**Memory…**_

_If she had been human then, she would have never let Claire fly away in a commandeered Umbrella Corporation helicopter._

_But she had not been human, and Claire had eventually understood._

"_I have to stay," Alice insisted in the brief, stolen moment after the disaster in Las Vegas, after the decision to break into the Umbrella desert compound had been made. "Someone has to end this."_

_Claire had run slender fingers through her strawberry blond hair, as if considering for a moment. When she finally looked at Alice, leaf green eyes flashed angrily. "Why does it have to be you? Why do you always have to be the hero, Alice?" She demanded fiercely through clenched teeth, jabbing a finger at Alice's chest. Her anger surfaced quickly, like a coiled snake suddenly striking at its prey._

"_I am not the hero," Alice closed her eyes against Claire's anger, inhaled as steadily as she could. This wasn't what she wanted, didn't Claire know that? It was never about what she wanted, had not been since the incident at the Hive. "I am the villain, and that is why it has to be me."_

_As soon as it had materialized, her lover's anger vanished and she was in front of her, close, framing her face with plaintive hands. "You're not a villain. I know you feel like Umbrella has ruined you in some way, but you're a good person. You don't have to go down there out of some misguided notion of guilt or obligation or whatever the hell it is that makes you think that you have to do this. Come with us. If Alaska is the paradise we're hoping, we'll be safe."_

_For a moment, Alice did not think she would be strong enough. Soft, pleading lips sought her own in agonizing desperation, and she knew if she opened her eyes at that moment, her resolve would crumble. For Claire's sake, she could not falter. "If I am there, then no one will be safe," she whispered._

_As if slapped, Claire pulled away, withdrew her hands in frustration. "I know you're scared of these things you can do with your mind, the psionic stuff but—"_

"_I killed her, Claire!" Alice finally shouted. "That girl Carlos told you about, Angela Ashford? The one we saved from Raccoon City? Umbrella took control of my mind and I shot her, as she stared, trusting me until the very moment I pulled the trigger. I pulled my weapon from its holster and I blew off the head of a child! In Vegas, I froze, unable to fight, unable to help, paralyzed because Umbrella took control! People died because I could not act!" Her fists clenched of their own volition, knuckles whitening, nails biting into her palms. The memory of Angie's face as she stared down the barrel of Alice's pistol still plagued her, constantly, always in the back of her mind. "How long before it happens again? Before it is you? Or K-mart? As long as I am this thing, I can't be with you."_

"_It isn't your fault .You're not a thing, Alice." If Claire cared about Alice's confession to murdering a child, to freezing in combat, it did not show on her features. All that was written on her lover's face was pain, yearning. "For fuck's sake, you idiot, I love you!"_

_Alice closed the gap between them in two swift steps, kissing Claire with all the fear and desperation, longing and love that she felt. She willed Claire to understand with her lips and tongue all that she felt. "I love you too," Alice whispered once the kiss was broken, their foreheads, noses still touching. It was the first time either of them had uttered the words, dangerous words for a time when death came so easily. It was every day implied, with every touch, her hand in the small of Claire's back, every brush of their lips in a solitary moment, every caress of a cheek, shoulder, hand, every whispered word in the back of the Hummer, but never declared. "That is why I have to do this, please."_

_She held Claire's face in her hands, her thumbs caressing her cheeks, wiping the moisture of tears away. Finally, Claire spoke. "You do what you have to but you have to promise me," She gazed at Alice with frightening intensity, heedless of the crack of her voice. "Promise me you'll find us when this is over. When you find whatever it is that redeems you, you come back to me. Promise me, Alice. Promise you'll come back to me."_

_Alice had promised._

_**Memory…**_

_ The camp was washed with the flickering orange yellow light of campfires. The leaders of Claire's convoy with the new addition of Alice sat in the back of a truck, debating whether a flight to Alaska was possible. The reward was potentially a place to stop running, stop fighting, but the risk was traveling hundreds of miles to only find more dead, more Infection._

_ Claire remained conspicuously aloof and quiet during the discussion, allowing her lieutenants to discuss the details, argue over the plausibility of the idea._

_ She hadn't trusted Alice, and Alice hadn't blamed her. Claire was twenty-six, twenty-seven? Before the world went to Undead shit, she would have been finishing college, starting a career, a family, making the frivolous mistakes of youth with few consequences. Now, she was a leader, with the weighty burden of dozens of lives resting solely on her shoulders. Alice could tell she bore the weight of each of those lives individually, each loss taking an expensive toll on her._

_ Alice stole glimpses of her in between pointing out maps and photographs in the journal to the others. The firelight reflected of her hair, casting it in fresh copper rather than its usual red blond. Alice followed her gaze to the people huddled around the campfires, then into the distance where eight crosses marked the graves of eight people that Claire felt as though she failed._

_ Her grief, guilt was palpable, though she presented a strong, stoic countenance, projected confidence and decisiveness._

_ But when her face was bathed in the unsteady glow of the fire and when she was thought that no was looking, she seemed younger, more fragile. She seemed much more her age, Alice realized and quickly averted her attention back to the others. _

_ It would be best for both of them if she did not involve herself._

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><p>But Alice had involved herself, more deeply than she had with anyone since before the incident at the Hive. And she had promised Claire to seek her out, find her once it was over, once she had found redemption. And now, though it wasn't over, she was human again.<p>

It might not have been the lasting salvation she had been searching for, but it was a start.

Now, she had found Claire.

The campfire seemed less warm, less romantic than it had in Nevada desert. In a cold field in the Alaskan wilderness full of planes and choppers but void of human life, it was a necessity more than a comfort. Claire's hair did not shine copper; it was matted rusty brown with dirt, filth.

As was the rest of her, caked in mud, her clothes too dirty, too ragged, too thin for the cold of the northern state. Hands bound above her head could not have been comfortable, but Claire still had not regained consciousness. She had barely stirred when Alice had pulled the spider-looking device from her chest.

Right before she had found Claire, Alice had asked her camcorder if wandering, searching for life and finding none was her punishment for letting all of this happen, for not being able to stop Umbrella in Raccoon City years ago. But now she was certain that if there was any punishment for her failures, that this was it.

Finally finding her lover, broken, starving, near death, seemingly with no memory of her. Seeing Claire a wraith, a shadow of the strong woman she was wrenched at her heart. What the hell had happened? Where were the others? Confusion simply muddled the tempest of emotions within her. Grief, anger, confusion, guilt, all vied for dominance with none emerging a clear victor. A lump formed in the back of her throat, but Alice swallowed it. She would be strong; Claire needed her, and there was still a promise to keep.

As Claire stirred, she jerked her wrists, testing the bonds that held her, like a feral animal realizing it was trapped, throwing itself blindly against the bars of its cage, wrestling with the restraints that bound it in hysterical panic.

Alice shoved her musings aside, crossing to where she had tied her to the undercarriage of an old plane; Claire always thought she was trying to be a hero, trying to save everyone when the truth was she had simply been trying to protect them from herself. Inhaling deeply, she knelt in front of her lover, willing herself to be the hero that Claire thought she was.


End file.
